Interesting article by Juan Cole on salon.com today. He says:
>>The center-north of Iraq is dominated by Sunni Arabs. Arabs are simply populations that speak Arabic as their native language; they are not a racial category. Sunnis constitute some 90 percent of the Muslims in the world, but are a minority of 20 percent in Iraq. They honor four early "rightly guided" caliphs, or vicars, of the prophet Mohammed and lack a strict clerical hierarchy. Sunni reformists often resemble Protestants in rejecting saint-worship and mediation between God and human beings.
East Baghdad and the south are Shiite Arab territory. Shiites honor the prophet's son-in-law and cousin, Ali, as the rightful successor of Mohammed, and invest the descendants of the prophet with special honor. The Iraqi Shiites do have a clerical hierarchy, at the pinnacle of which is the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the chief source of religious authority.<<
So the Sunnis lack "a strict clerical hierarchy," while the Shiites rely on the Grand Ayatollah as the chief source of religious authority for instructions on how to vote. Hmmm, this rings a bell.
>>The death last month of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson not only deprived the Lubavitcher Hasidim of their spiritual leader, but also took from the city a longtime political touchstone. Few campaigns have dared to delete the Eastern Parkway headquarters of the world Lubavitch movement and its Rebbe, as he was known, from their itinerary.
An analysis of election returns challenges the totem that members of the Hasidic sect in Crown Heights reflexively vote as an organized bloc in every election. But the analysis suggests that while they account for fewer voters than some other Hasidic sects and their concerns about Israel may weigh more heavily in their political calculations, when they are galvanized by an issue or a candidate, members of the Lubavitch movement, like those of many other groups, can be monolithic.
The 35 percent won by United States Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato in 1992 in the Hasidic part of the neighborhood and the 32 percent polled there by Edward I. Koch during the 1989 mayoral primary against Mr. Dinkins and two other candidates also indicate bloc voting by the Hasidim, according to the analysis of census and election results conducted for The New York Times by Dr. Andrew A. Beveridge of Queens College and an assistant, Jeannie D'Amico.<<
(NY Times, July 3, 1994)
and
>>Ronald Reagan gave his blessing today to the political action movement among evangelical Christians who advocate bloc voting for candidates who share their views.
In a speech delivered to about 15,000 conservative church leaders at a meeting here, the Republican Presidential nominee brushed aside the argument that church-based politics conflicts with the Constitution.
''When I hear the First Amendment used as a reason to keep traditional moral values away from policymaking, I am shocked,'' Mr. Reagan said. ''The First Amendment was written not to protect the people and their laws from religious values, but to protect those values from government tyranny. But over the last two or three decades the Federal Government seems to have forgotten both 'that old time religion' and that old time Constitution.''<<
(NY Times, August 23, 1980)
I really find it highly interesting that large segments of the Anybody but Nader camp, who saw the Kerry campaign as a kind of thumb in the dike against religious authoritarianism, are now enthusing over Shiite power.
Alternet's Zelie Pollon sounded like she was on CNN:
>>"I voted from the bottom of my heart and for all my family. I am so happy," said 57-year-old Rafidah Fatheh Shaab, who voted in her neighborhood of Shula in northern Baghdad. "I was not afraid. Today I even skipped breakfast so I could pray for all Iraqis � and even Americans � to have freedom and prosperity."
Then she held up her hand to show a blue-stained finger, the official mark that she had voted. "It has been black in Iraq since 1963 and today the sun is shining," she said.<<
Robert Scheer writes in the Nation Magazine:
>>The election in Iraq, though flawed, is terrific news. Any time a people get to use the ballot box instead of guns to make history, they, and the rest of the world, benefit immensely.
That more than 60 percent of those eligible are estimated to have voted despite the dreadful conditions in war-torn Iraq is a testament to the enormous courage humans so often display under extreme duress. <<
Although nobody can possibly want to return to a situation of Sunni privilege, there is something truly hypocritical about all this blather about the wonders of the ballot box. Leaving aside the question of people voting because they feared that their ration cards would be taken away if they didn't, it is obvious that the Shiites turned out and voted in a bloc because they are religious zealots who lack the power to think for themselves. They need a "chief source of religious authority" to tell them how to vote.
Frankly, as disgusted as I am about Hillary Clinton telling teenaged girls to keep their knickers on and by the possum-like behavior of Democratic Senators in the face of Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzalez, there is something about this pandering to religious bloc voting that makes me want to puke.
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